


A Benediction in Blood

by Craftnarok



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Gen, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5188772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Craftnarok/pseuds/Craftnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An idea of what Thomas might have been thinking during and after his suicide attempt. I needed to give him back his bite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This is the way the world ends

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed, so apologies for any mistakes. I hope it comes somewhere close to giving Thomas the consideration he ought to have got from the final episode of series 6. He deserved better.

Thomas wondered how his life might have been had it taken any of a thousand different turns. He wondered if it had always been inevitable that he would end up here, shivering and alone in this final false-ablution which could not wash him clean. Did he deserve this end? Perhaps he had never been meant for this world in the first place. His life was a list of cruelties, failures and perversions and he felt hollowed out by them, as though each rejection had stripped a little more of him away until there was nothing left with which to push back. He was exhausted and broken and the thought of waking up tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow under the shackled weight of whole years of life left to live was suffocating.

As he sat in the lukewarm water he knew he should not let himself be tarried by his thoughts, knew he should make his move before he could weaken his resolve, but the last remnants of his humanity screamed to be allowed their final words. There was nothing for him in this world. The people he had loved had all left him to his fate; his family, his lovers, his precious few friends. He was nobody’s confidant, nobody’s beloved, and nobody’s son. He was nobody and nothing, not to any one of them, just _‘silly, old Mr Barrow, are you still here?’_ , and his isolation had finally caught him unawares, closer to the precipice than he had ever realised he was standing. He only had to jump.

There had always been something wrong in him, something that did not fit, and it had blazed hot and furious that the world would have him shut away to save them from knowing the uncomfortable truth of his existence. He was a twist of nature, a foul sinner, pervert and dangerous perverter, revolting, cruel, _unwanted_. Worst of all, hardest to forgive, he wasn’t even sorry for it. But his fire had gone out. The final boot to the final ember and there was nothing left but ash.

Even this last act felt perverse, marking him as different from every other soul under the roof of this house that wanted him gone. It felt strange to lie in a bath while still clothed, but he would not let himself be found naked, vulnerable and open to scrutiny and pity and second-hand embarrassment. He might not know it when he was gone, but he felt it keenly enough now that he was determined to keep his dignity to the very end. Fuck every last one of them. They might find his empty shell, but they would not see him utterly undone.

Finally, finally, he shook himself from his reverie and grasped the razor. His mind flew back to that hospital ward, some ten years before, a blind Lieutenant and an alarm raised too late. He had tried to help then, tried to be good and kind, but it wasn’t enough; his kindness was never enough. Nobody could see it in him, even when he thrust it into the light and offered it on an altar. He could not wash away his sins and become something other than the creature of spite and hardness that the world saw him to be. He was Cassandra, and his prophesies were gentleness and ardour. Perhaps he was what they said after all. Kindness was good for nothing; it simpered and wormed and tricked, but in the end it brought you nothing but the long, hard fall that came with dashed hopes. He had hoped enough. It was now or never.

Right first. His strong right arm that had laboured over love letters, (un)dressed Dukes, smoked ten thousand cigarettes and ten thousand more, and poured glass after glass of other people’s fine wine. One last task now.

Left arm. Clock winder, skin caresser, stretcher bearer, shot clean through. His fingers fumbled, clumsy. Should have thought of that, but he could manage. It was a rush like he hadn’t expected, the adrenaline that came with finally taking his life into his own hands and pouring it away. He dropped the razor to the floor and sank back to wait for his release. The water didn’t feel all that cold as he slid deeper, up to his throat, the backs of his hands resting on his thighs and his palms facing upwards in a bloody benediction to whatever cruel god might finally take pity and grant him his deliverance from this hell.

Idly he wondered what happened now. Wasn’t your life supposed to flash before your eyes? Had he made so little of his 35 years? Perhaps one had to choose. He thought of bright blue eyes and the golden hair that had taken his reason away from him, and he wondered at the ability of such a ghostly image to make his heart twinge even then, even after so long, even despite so much cruelty and so long a silence. He thought of a callous Duke with a face he couldn’t remember, but Thomas knew he had been handsome and thrilling, and he had never been happier than in that stolen summer when love was a game and he could pretend that the world was his oyster and he was free to live as he chose.

Even the bittersweet memories were comforting to him as he wondered how long he would have to wait for the dark. The ruined eyes of a gentle officer, frightened but proud, searching him out in the blackness to lay a hand upon his knee. The shared glances and knowing smirks on the face of an accomplice; he should have known to fear her wrath. Precious tea, over-steeped, made too-sweet to cover the bitterness and grime, shared in a dugout with a man from home in one moment of calm amongst a storm of horror. The dark hair of a mother he could barely remember, and a father who couldn’t understand this young man who had once been his son. The ticking clocks of home; time had always been running out for him, when he thought about it. He was free now, at least. And they were all free of him. One last act of kindness.

He wondered whether they would see it this time.


	2. Not with a bang but a whimper.

It was peculiar the way in which time could stretch and bend. There was a moment when he opened his eyes where time meant nothing. He was lying in a bed looking up at an off-white ceiling, as he had done nearly every morning for the past fifteen years. So far so normal. Then came another moment where a thousand thoughts flooded his mind simultaneously, and yet the seconds seemed to drag across hours. He shouldn’t be awake. He shouldn’t be anything. Could this be death? It felt horrifyingly close to the life he had just resolutely turned his back on. His brain felt fuzzy. He couldn’t think. He didn’t understand. Tears of frustration threatened to break free from his eyes, and he raised a sluggish hand to brush them away. White bandages, the sharp pull of stitched flesh, and the shuffle of movement beside his bed.

Oh.

Oh fuck.

_Fuck._

It was Ms. Baxter’s voice that struggled to find a path through his befuddled brain. Something about Dr Clarkson, and ‘ _just in time’_ , and _‘what were you thinking’_ , and _‘oh, Thomas’_. He didn’t want to listen; he couldn’t bear it. He rolled onto his side, dragging the covers over his ears, his throbbing wrists cradled beneath his chin and he sobbed. Even his death wasn’t his own. In the end, he was always going to be beholden to someone else. They couldn’t even let him have this.

A tentative hand came to rest on his shoulder, a gesture of comfort or pity, but it burned like a brand and he shrugged away from it. He didn’t need to be coddled by her of all people, she who thought his worries trivial and silly and smiled so very fucking benignly as if she was the Virgin Mary herself. His stamped-on remnant of kindness whispered that that wasn’t quite fair, but the weight of his misery silenced it. How good she must feel, how heroic, how grand: the valiant rescuer! Well she couldn’t lay claim to his life; one day he would do it right and she would know that she owned no part of him, that he belonged to no-one but himself. No man was an island? Thomas Barrow could be whatever the fuck he liked.

He blinked and his shudders softened. He was surprised by the ferocity of his anger, the familiar burn of it in his gut, not because it felt unwarranted, but because he had thought it lost along with every other emotion he had once possessed. Perhaps he wasn’t quite so hollow after all. Maybe if he crept carefully and shone a light on the very deepest shadows and the darkest cracks of his shattered self he might find more. More feelings, more fury, more _fight_. It wasn’t much to go on, but since he doubted he would be allowed to so much as piss without supervision for the foreseeable future, it was something. It might hold off the crushing despair for a little while, this idea of a thought of a feeling. It was one guttering candle in a cathedral of blackness, but better that than nothing. Who expected anything other than venom or bile from him anyway? If they thought he would be rebirthed into something soft and pliant for their benefit then he would be delighted to show them otherwise.

A chair creaked behind him as Ms. Baxter sat back down, taking up her silent vigil once again thinking Thomas had gone back to sleep, or at least pretending to believe it for both their sakes. That much kindness Thomas would accept and he allowed himself to drift back towards unconsciousness. He felt strangely safe in the afterglow of his newfound anger, this knowledge that there was more of him left than he had realised. It was something like proof that he had retained power over his own future, despite what _they_ might think, and that perhaps, just maybe, there was more than one way out. If there was one thing Thomas had always been good at, it was channelling his righteous fury. As it stood, the only thing he knew for certain was that one way or another he would not spend another fifteen years waking up to borrowed time beneath somebody else’s roof.

 


End file.
